I went in with Oblivion and had very few expectations when I first got the game. It was actually a gift that my mother had given me, after she had heard about the GOTY edition going on sale from a gamestop employee. I had heard of the elder scrolls series in passing before but I never knew too much about it. I ended up spending over 1,000 hours playing Oblivion.
When Fallout 3 came out, I also had no expectations for it, having never heard of the franchise previously, and I once again strongly enjoyed the game.
Then, when Skyrim was announced, I started to actively post here on these forums, and I feel a few friends of mine in real life and I were very massively hyped up over it. There was even a period in July of 2011 where I had to go to the hospital due to a car accident for about 3 days, and I was excited to see what news would be announced by the time I got out and was having dreams about it. It's probably the most hyped up I've ever been for a videogame and I was ultimately disappointed. It felt weird, as well, since I couldn't place why I initially felt disappointed until sometime later. Sure, the attribute removal and many of the skill removals were weird, as well as many of the perks disappointing, but I would look around at the gorgeous world and find myself asking "why am I not able to enjoy this as much as I feel I should?"
Ultimately, I felt like the dialogue and writing issues as far as Skyrim goes were what ultimately held back my enjoyment. I couldn't enjoy exploring a new settlement when almost none of the NPCs would have dialogue or acknowledge my presence. I understand that it's definitely not good to have NPCs treat you like you're the center of the universe and that there are many places in the real world where people might not have much to say to you, but it just felt like a massive reduction in content. You should always be able to unlock dialogue with NPCs, even if they're not initially very friendly towards you, depending on the actions you commit to.
Other than that, there were only 5 or so quests in Skyrim that I ultimately enjoyed. I also expected the jobs and economy stuff to be more fleshed out, as well as the magic system, which was skeletal at best. I spent about 90% of my time in Skyrim just mindlessly exploring dungeons, fighting through them, and about 10% trying to take on quests, which I ultimately found to be rather boring. The college questline was great and I had high hopes for it initially, but its small amount of quests and strange pacing after the initial quests were off-putting.
I feel like in Oblivion, even though one could argue that the NPCs are often not as memorable as many in Skyrim, the quests in Oblivion helped to make each NPC involved much more memorable. You'd ultimately remember them more through the enjoyment of the quests involving them. That's how it was for me, at least. In Skyrim, due to many of the poor quests and overall writing, plus the sparsity of dialogue options, I felt like ultimately there were very few memorable NPCs.
But yeah, tl;dr - I'd have to answer "yes."
I'm going to be approaching Fallout 4 with low expectations, and hopefully TES VI as well. I somewhat have a feeling that BGS have noticed this same trend that you're asking us about now, and I feel like this might be the reason for their more silent marketing approach as of lately. Where they tend to sort of just keep quiet about everything they're working on, until it's practically done, and then they show very little information about stuff minus a few new features here or there. I suppose one of the great things about branding is that now BGS doesn't have to do too much marketing for itself. Most people know what they're getting into.
I feel like the "discovery" aspect is also something that colored my experience in Oblivion. Ultimately, I think the less I know about the game's plot and the more idiosyncrasies of the region that I have available for exploration, the better for me. I feel like many of the spoilers I was reading up on and the lore speculation here around Skyrim may have impacted my enjoyment.
TES is definitely an interesting series, in that to some extent, with many fans, I feel like you have to sort of "learn" not only how to utilize the new systems in each game, but you also have to "learn" how to enjoy each game within its own merits.